2015 Class 10: Best digital communication (Winner)

Winner: Sequel Group/Kerry Foods

Entry Title: kfl

Company activities

Kerry Foods is one of the leading manufacturers and suppliers of branded and private label chilled and frozen food in Great Britain and Ireland. It’s part of the wider multi-billion pound Kerry Group business.

ere are more than 8,000 employees at 30+ sites across the UK and Ireland, a mixture
of head-of ce function, manufacturing and distribution.

Target audience/Aim of entry

k (Kerry Foods Insight) is a bi-monthly digital microsite for middle managers and above. With so many demands on their time, they expect to be able to access information quickly and easily, often while on the move – and k ful ls this brief in full.

K ’s overarching goal is to keep its audience in touch with the company’s strategic direction, future vision and performance. It’s all about encouraging aspirational behaviour, people development and communication among this key audience as well as keeping them up to date on the company’s strategic vision and market performance.

Content and goals

e entry issue had to be completed in March, ready for publication on 1 April. From this point onwards k switched from quarterly to bi-monthly.

We worked together with the client to discuss what success would look like and to plan how to pull it together. By the end of our discussion, we all had a list of nine speci c goals for the magazine/ microsite:

1. Provide a top-notch user experience – this was the primary requirement

2. Be fully responsive – it had to work in the same way (and equally well) across all devices

3. Use all the latest web technologies available and incorporates current best practices for design – we knew the limitations of using Flash, so we decided very early on to scrap that in favour of HTML

4. Spark a rich dialogue with (and between) users – we didn’t just want to know if users liked an article; we wanted to engage them
in a discussion about the issues raised or the strategy covered in the article; and we wanted to build a responsive user community

5. Use the home page as the index – we wanted users to know at a glance what stories were
on offer each month, and to be able to identify quickly which articles related to their particular area of interest

6. Look clean and uncluttered – busy managers have no time to wade through text or be constantly bothered with pop-ups. ey want clear navigation and appealing pages that allow them to access information quickly and easily

7. Include gami cation – there was a lot of discussion around gami cation. And that’s not altogether surprising, given how many people now participate in gaming activities. So we were to incorporate gami cation within the microsite, to add a further way to engage the audience develop their knowledge of the business

8. Enable users to view video in HD–if you’ve ever had cause to watch a poor-quality corporate video, you’ll know what a painful experience it can be… reduced screen sizes, pixelated images and mud ed sound – not great for an organization that aims for excellence. So we knew that Flash had to go! In its place, we introduced HTML

9. Includedirectlinkstorelevantstories–alltoo often, old digital stories are published and then placed on a digital shelf where they are left to gather digital dust! So we decided to make old stories easily identi able and accessible at the click of a mouse.

k achieves all nine goals. It provides an improved user experience through improved navigation and by addressing the other eight goals.

When it comes to planning the content, functional and department heads are invited to propose article ideas about the issues that matter most to them – anything from culture shift to vision and values.

It’s not a case of just including everything that’s proposed – Comms Manager Dillan Shikotra pushes to include a good balance of material that:

Features as many business units as possible

Covers a variety of locations

Shares best practice

Raises awareness of strategic goals and achievements

Reflects the company’s position in the market and its plans to achieve growth.

And of course we can’t lose sight of the journalistic ‘staples’: clear, easy to read content, engaging articles, headlines and captions, and eye-catching photos. We know that however smart and snappy
a microsite, great content is vital; we want the readers to trust the publication and enjoy their read.

The kfi Microsite is aimed at middle managers and above. ey are desk-based with constant access to electronic devices, so content is very much business-focused, with an authoritative tone. e emphasis is on marketing, business improvement and personal development.

– where we design for a smartphone then expand design ideas naturally to suit other devices. HTML makes feedback more accessible on all devices. For example readers are invited to suggest which trend they think will most challenge the business in the Hot Topic section. is enriches feedback and creates a community feel. Readers can also ‘like’ and rate articles (on the home page, they

can run a mouse over a story to see its average rating).

Every story is in full view on the home page meaning no searching for relevant content is needed and. But to prevent a cluttered design, the microsite’s scrolling function means articles can be as long as they need to be.

Rather than each story ghting for space,
users can link directly to the one they are most interested in, for example in the “Marketing” tab, and to aid the user content is colour coded. For example, HR stories always have green in their heading, key lines, pull quotes and so on, to provide consistency.

Gami cation is now a feature of k – e Rollover Lottery game is a fun example of this.

Videos are now streamed straight from the server, viewed full screen in HD on all devices which is ideal for short presentations by senior managers. Our content management system creates direct links to relevant archived stories (“choice cuts”). A good example is the “Sourcing new talent” story, which includes “You may also like” links to two related stories (tagged using key words).

Outcome

52 per cent of the target audience read the magazine for more than ve minutes. is is double the industry benchmark of 25 per cent.